Winter Backpacking and Packrafting Trip through Lake Powell and Escalante, Utah

What's going on everybody, Eric Hanson here with Backpacking TV. Today I am super excited to be going on a big desert adventure with you all. So I am in canyon country of Utah and I am about to drop in to the canyon right behind me for a three-day adventure with three other buddies and we're actually going packrafting, backpacking with packrafts. So that's going to be the exciting twist on our adventure. We're going to take this canyon down until we run into Lake Powell and then we are going to inflate our packrafts and float down to another canyon and then hike up that drainage back to our car. So it's going to be a big adventure. We've got the biggest backpacks that I've carried in a long, long time. It is super heavy. I am not going ultra light whatsoever but that's okay. It's winter here, it's cold, it's going to be a grand old time. I am super excited for this trip. So if you would like to join me, let's go drop into canyon country. Boom! So here's my pack. It's going to be quite a bit bigger than I'm normally used to carrying. Mainly because of this culprit right here. That's my boat. So that's an alpaca packraft right in there that I've stored in here. I've got some breakdown paddles. You can see one's here and another's right there. One paddle shaft. The other paddle shaft. I've got my tripod so I can take some photos. Water shoes. I don't normally like advocating for gear on the outside of a pack. I think it's cumbersome but carrying this much gear I don't really have a choice. Crew's mounted up and we're hitting the trail. Eric! That was intense. Well we're just dropping in to kind of the proper part of the canyon and I think that we just saw the last bit of our sunlight for a while. It is cold down here but we're going to have some fun. This canyon is gorgeous. We've got some soaring walls with some desert varnish coming down. It's looking gorgeous. Super stoked for the next few days. Just around this bend is one of the marvels of the canyon. Holy cow. That's a rich reward. I've been hiking about a mile and a half. Not too far. So man what a good payoff right off the bat to see this arch. Such a stunner. So navigating has become much more challenging lately. We passed that big arch and that seems to be where everybody gets to and then turns around. So there was a nice easy trail and we're past that and so the trail is practically gone. So it's all bushwacky route finding and trying to stay out of the water. But yeah we're kind of having to push our way through the willows and the tamarisk and all this junk that's down here overgrowing the bottom. It might be a grind to get even a few more miles in here. Just not many people come out here. We may have encountered an impassable object. That one looks cold. It looks really deep. It looks deep right there yeah. Right off the bat. It looks like you'd get at least waist deep. That's deep. Like if I do this I'm like chucking my pack and I'm gonna climb over here to that shallow part. That's like you're getting in all the way right here. Yeah. And honestly it might I don't know which would be easier to like repack my pack so that it. Are you recording me right now? This is the drama. The drama. Repack the pack so we can get totally wet or just air up the raft right now that isn't even inside my pack. And we don't have to repack at all. Yeah. Yeah. It'd be fun. Let's just do it. All right. That's why we brought these things. So we decided that it was best to actually inflate our pack rafts and float across this because the water is mighty cold and we don't really look forward to getting super soaked. Senor Brian. Look at Gollum hands back there. Looking good there buddy. Freaking adventure. Brian did we lose you? Just one of those. Well we successfully navigated the super narrow part. It was well worth actually inflating our pack rafts. It definitely saved us from going through a pretty sustained good bit of water up to our necks. But it was it was just fun too. So we finally got our stuff repacked up. Brian here is struggling with his socks. But we are ready to proceed down canyon and this place is just amazing. These walls are just massive. I just love this place so much. Can't wait to see what else we have ahead. Well it feels like we're kind of in mode to find camp. The temperature is dropping. We've been hiking through the water for the last hour. Feet are cold. You can see here on this waterfall behind me that there's actually just ice all over it. So we're having to hike through the water despite the fact that the water is barely above freezing. The air temperature is barely above freezing and it's cold enough that what's frozen overnight just isn't thawing. So it's beautiful. It's stunning down here. But we got to find a dry warmer place to camp. We're going to try to find something up on this bench I think. But I think we're starting to feel some urgency here. Well for all the fear that I had of not having a camp we lucked out big time. This place is awesome. We've got great views. We had sunshine to warm up in and dry off in. Best part of all we're up and elevated away from the water. So it's like 15 degrees warmer up here. We've got cool places to explore. Good sources of water. Warmth. Good stargazing. I mean this place has it all. A cup of coffee. We're brewing up some breakfast here in the amphitheater. Just got a perfect little spot to spend the night. So cool being right by this other slot canyon and then being up above the river made a big difference. It was like 10 degrees warmer last night. Now we're going to try to pack up camp. Shuffle down canyon. We got about two miles before we can put in on Lake Powell and start inflating our boats and paddling. And the adventure continues. We set off about an hour ago and uh it's just kind of been a heinous morning of bushwhacking and route finding and down climbing and scrambling around. Canyon walls keep getting deeper and bigger but we still have a couple more miles I think before we're going to reach where we can put in. Which is crazy to think about how far Lake Powell has dropped. Kind of a gray gross day of bushwhacking ahead of us. Stay tuned for more fun everybody. That's the canyon we came down. This is a little side canyon and we still got all that to explore. I think we finally made it to the edge of Lake Powell. It's super weird being at this line. Everything's all trashy. Just where the lake levels receded. Left behind a bunch of driftwood and mud and crap. Be ready to actually get on the water and paddle. It's time to set off on our adventure. We're on the water officially. Well Brian's not. Clay's on the water. Eric's on the water. We've got about five miles of paddling to go do. It's gonna be a cold wet fun time. Hopefully not too wet. Now joined up with the main canyon. Escalante drainage here and all this is Lake Powell. Got a few more miles to paddle. Let's go. This is pretty sweet getting the packraft through here. I've been wanting to do this trip for a long time. It's a little different than I expected. The muddy sections were harder than I thought. It was a little bit more depressing than I thought going through some of that old lake line that has just receded. Just seeing the kind of state of the canyon. It's kind of disappointing. We've got another mile or so of being in this main corridor and then we're gonna try to find our exit up on the other, the next south canyon. Yeah we still have a lot of work to do. So even though we're right in the middle golden zone there's a lot left to do. So there's an arch up here that apparently we can paddle right through. This used to be submerged. Well used to be fully freestanding. Then it got submerged. Now the lake has receded enough, just enough, to let us pass underneath. I've actually been really excited about this part. This looks so sick. That was so cool. That's an incredible feature right there. Holy cow. This whole canyon is insane. Good job boys. Well we've successfully done our paddling portion. Now it's time to take down these packrafts, pack everything up, and we got to get a couple miles up canyon, warm up, find camp, and uh yeah settle in for the night. It's getting late. We've got a lot to do. It is really starting to get dark in here. You can't see probably harder than anything on the camera. So we're trying to get around one more bend. Just the tiniest little sliver of light up above. This is one of the wildest backpacking trips I've ever been on. So gnarly in here. Ready for camp though. Well we did successfully find camp. We've just cooked some dinner. Now we're pretty much gonna crash and go to bed. Wasn't where we expected to be for the night, but hey, we're making do. Pretty stellar canyon here. Can't wait to see what this place has to offer tomorrow. We stumbled in late last night onto this bench and got pretty lucky because we didn't really know where we were trying to get to exactly. We knew that there was some good camping in the area, but it was after dark and so we just scrambled up this bench and found some really great camping here with this big curve of the canyon. We've got a big slot canyon right behind us that's all narrow and full of water. So the goal for today is to continue on up canyon. We've got about five more miles in the canyon and then we're gonna escape out the and get back to our truck hopefully and celebrate and toast our grand adventure. It's been a great time so far and just gonna drink in this morning a little bit more because it's fantastic out here. So we're back tracking through what we were hiking through last night. Could tell it was really amazing last night. There was no light and now look at this. This is just like a chamber of light and it is so beautiful. So good. I'm really glad we navigated this direction as this canyon is by far the more pleasant canyon to end in. The other drainage that we came down just got a lot of choked out stuff. Not nearly as pretty. This one just has so many soaring walls and gorgeous sandstone alcoves and curves. It's so beautiful, so inviting. This is definitely the way to go. Today's been a real treat having fun with the guys. Just feels like an adventure out here. We've hiked a good ways today. Gone about three miles and we definitely still have more to go. At some point we're going to be looking for a way out of this canyon so we can then go across country back to our vehicles. Well the canyon is really starting to flatten out. Walls are not so wild although that slot canyon right there looks super interesting. But we're looking now for an exit point to get up and out and then start hiking across overland to our truck. We've got a spot up here that looks pretty promising so I think we're going to try to take it and see if it'll go. I think we're all starting to feel it. Pretty weary at this point. This is definitely proving to be tough. Our exit out into the flat country is working. It's just really hard. This is our last major obstacle. Still drainage but we've got a nice slot right here so we can't get down here. Up the other side of that ridge is the truck. So our truck is right up there and this is the only thing standing in our way. No big deal. So I think we found a way across the slot canyon that's holding us back right now. Looks like we can get down it at this kind of sketchy put in and then get up the other side. The end is nigh. Well we can officially see the truck which means I'm gonna wrap things up here. Daylight is fading. We've got 20 minutes of daylight left so we're making it back just in the nick of time. Honestly this was a pretty good ass kicking of an adventure but so so fun. So I just loved packrafting. It opens up so many more places that you just can't get to without those fun little tools. Thanks so much for watching. If you have any questions about packrafting or just anything in general please hit me up in the comments below. If you like this video make sure that you give it that thumbs up and you're subscribed here at Backpacking TV. Thanks so much for watching. I'm Eric Hansen. I'm gonna go have a nice big bonfire and a cold beer. See you later. Good job buddy. Yeah good stuff. Cheers everybody. What a good adventure.